Computer users in both the business and home environment have become accustomed to using a computer with a graphical operating system. For example, many users operate computers having a Microsoft Corporation “WINDOWS” operating system thereon. Certain components of these graphical operating systems are known as “controls.” For example, a control may be an “OK” button, which is generally a rectangular button with “OK” written in it. By moving the cursor over the button and clicking on the mouse, a known operation will begin that is associated with the control. Many other controls exist, with examples including scroll bars, dialog boxes and sliders.
These controls are used not only by stand-alone applications on a computer, but are also used in a network environment, such as the Internet. In this networked environment, the documents or “web pages” are currently created using Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) tags and Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) properties. Together, these elements dictate how a web page will look. For example, to create a typical button on a page, the author of the web page would write: “<input type=button value=‘Button’>”. If the web page author desired a customized button, the author might write: “<input type=button value=‘Button’ style=‘background-color:blue;color:white; border:solid red'’”. The resulting button is thus customized using the style to create a button having a blue background with white lettering and a solid red border. As can then be seen, CSS properties are used by a website author to specify the colors, fonts and border styles for a control on the page being created. Further, a web author may specify an external style sheet, which is not integral with the web page being created. This allows the style sheet to be changed without modifying the source HTML web page document. These external style sheets may be shared among several documents.
However, the CSS properties are not associated with the operating system of the computer. As such, if the architecture of the operating system is updated, which may include updated controls, the web pages or HTML-based applications utilizing CSS properties will not get any benefit from such an update. As the operating system is updated or changed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to coordinate the look of the web pages created with the operating system. Therefore, while CSS Properties allow an author to create an appearance that is cohesive across a created website or HTML-based applications, they do not allow an author to utilize controls that are consistent with other websites and with the operating system.
It would be beneficial to have a computer system and method that allows the controls used on a website or within an HTML-based application to have the same appearance as other controls used across the operating system. For example, some of the operating system may be implemented in the Internet environment, such as on HTML documents. It would be desirable for the controls used on these HTML documents to appear the same as controls in a non-HTML document. This is especially important if the non-HTML controls are being rendered according to a specified theme, or set of defined appearance characteristics. If the controls on the HTML documents and the controls in the non-HTML documents are rendered according to the same theme, a more desirable look could be achieved.